Aeturnalus

Dedicated Robot Controller Board

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:05:39 +0000

I was thinking a few days ago to make my robot platform standalone, and not dependent on the Arduino Duemilanove. As the Arduino is quite expensive, but its assorted parts are not (An ATMega328 and a ceramic resonator total to about $7.00), I decided to make a so-called ‘standalone Arduino’. Since this board is designed to be a slave to the Arduino, and not to be removed from the robot, it will be designed with a ZIF 28-pin DIP socket (for programming), and have only 5 pins to connect to the Arduino (Vbatt, Vcc, Vss, sclk, sdata). Communication will be done via the I2C interface.

As I don’t possess the ZIF socket or some other important parts yet, the board is currently incomplete. The soldering is quite messy, unfortunately, as a result of a bad iron and really fat solder. Also a lot of it is jury-rigged, since the pre-drilled PCB doesn’t have Vcc and Vss rails.

Family Camp 2010

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:28:58 +0000

This year’s Family Camp was undoubtedly better than last years, primarily because the number of people was planned for and executed better. There was not a shortage of food, and the campfire, especially, was quite nice.

As large open fires were forbidden by the campground, we brought in an electric fire, and ‘lit’ it with thirteen torches. Thereafter, there were many quite well-performed skits, as well as the usual not-so-good ones.

Protected: Junior Prom Poll

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:10:00 +0000

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

FlexLab

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:57:37 +0000

I’m playing with the FlexLab right now… it could use a decent amount of improvement. It appears to be some version of a reshelled VNC client-server paradigm. It has the same, annoying lag – maybe 100ms, minimum. Seems totally overrated – horrible interface and latency problems. It also doesn’t have any resolution to speak of: 800x600px – I don’t know what they’re doing.

808 Keychain Camera

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:15:19 +0000

Today I received a pair of 808 Keychain Cameras (#3), available on eBay for cheap. They’re tiny little things, using a microsd card for storage. Their image quality is surprisingly good, but I have yet to find a way to change the timestamp on them.

Sample video:

Yes, my sister’s piano skills could use a little bit of improvement, but that’s not the point of the video. The video is slightly lower quality than the original, due to the flash reencoding. It’s good enough, anyways.

One strange thing about this camera is that it records 720x480px files, but the sensor itself is 640×480. Thus all files must be converted to 640×480.

New Server

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:37:03 +0000

Hey all,

Today I finalized my migration of Aeturnalus to linode. The reasons behind the move are primarily technical, ranging from rather high downtimes to annoying and useless support and slow connection speeds. As Linode is a VPS, or a virtual private server, I get the opportunity to administrate the lower-level functions for myself, which is quite useful. The speed that comes with it is probably noticeable to you, as well. Most of the sites I host will be properly migrated soon, and are only limited by my time. Please comment if you find anything broken and/or not working properly.

Life.

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:38:30 +0000

As things go, this week could have been better. I had my tests (of which there were too many), I wrote our essays, and I did my homework. Unfortunately, at least for some of the tests, I didn’t do all that great… Hopefully I can make it back up later.

As regards to West Valley: Yesterday I went to WVC and went to my first Math 004A class… it was pretty fun, but today I’m going to take a look at Physics 004A as well. Learning some new things would be a nice change… rather than just stressing over history and whatnot.

Also, I’ll be switching servers soon, so some stuff will change.

Summertime

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:23:25 +0000

As the end of summer approaches, it makes me think about what I’ve done (or haven’t done) over this summer. I spent most of my time on my internship at Cypress… which has been an awesome experience. Unfortunately, as a result of actually being busy, I haven’t gotten much else done this summer. I am almost done with summer homework, and most likely will be by tomorrow, but the “Viking” day is just a few days off – and a week later, school. I don’t know if I’m prepared for it… not the studies, but having to adhere to a schedule that is not set by myself (even work is paid hourly… I go early to get more stuff done and get paid more, not because I absolutely have to).

Also, as a culmination of the summer, my sister is leaving from China on Monday and arriving at SFO on Monday, so we’re going to go and pick her up. Yesterday, I also managed to get my driver’s permit, which was quite easy, actually. It was kind of interesting – they accidentally gave me the 18+ driver’s license test, which I passed, then they made me take the normal permit test, which I passed too. My lesson is arranged for next Sunday… the day before school!

About 15 minutes ago I got my first debit card… Not sure what I’m going to do with it, as most of its features are also present in Paypal, and Paypal is more safe to use, as I don’t expose my bank account directly.

Sequential Date Day

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:12:58 +0000

So today’s date is kinda interesting. Notice how its August 9, 2010, or a rather significant sequence… If you didn’t get it yet its cause its

8-9-10

To compound that, this post is published at 11:12 AM, so the full date and time would be…

8-9-10 11:12AM

8, 9, 10, 11, 12 =)

Happy sequential date day!

Tentative Class Schedule

admin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:00:24 +0000

Tentative Schedule for next year:

AP Statistics
International Business
AP US History
AP Chemistry
AP Language and Composition
No Class
No Class

I wonder if I’m sharing classes with anyone…